Newark Mayor and Democratic Senate Candidate Cory Booker has dismissed controversy over a private Twitter conversation he had with a stripper from Portland.

BuzzFeed first reported Wednesday that Lynsie Lee, a stripper at the vegan strip club Casa Diablo, began talking with Booker after they both appeared in "Follow Friday: The Film," a movie about Twitter. Lee recently tweeted a screenshot of a direct message between herself and Booker, where the mayor tells Lee "the East Coast loves you and by the East Coast, I mean me."

(Click here to see the screenshot on BuzzFeed. Warning: post contains NSFW content.)

A spokesman for Booker responded directly to the story in a statement Wednesday.

“The mayor talks with people from all walks of life on Twitter,” said Booker spokesman Kevin Griffis. “The most shocking part of the story was learning that there is a vegan strip club in Portland.”

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11 Paranoid Obama Conspiracy Theories

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One of the most popular Obama conspiracy theories (aka the Birther Movement), endorsed (or not denied) by the likes of Tom Delay, Lou Dobbs, Chuck Norris and Liz Cheney, it claims that Obama is not an American citizen, thus rendering his presidency illegitimate, or something. The theory hinges on the false claim that his birth certificate is fake. Birther queen Orly Taitz (a lawyer and dentist from California) continues to lead the march, despite her lawsuit getting thrown out and a $20,000 fine.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a proponent of many bizarre and outlandish critiques of President Obama, declared in April that the White House was trying to install youth re-education camps.
"It's under the guise of -- quote -- volunteerism. But it's not volunteers at all. It's paying people to do work on behalf of government," said the Minnesota Republican. "I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."

This one is a doozy. Larry Sinclair, a petty criminal specializing in forgery, spread wild accusations via YouTube involving gay sex, drugs and possible murder committed by Barack Obama. At one point reporters apparently took Sinclair seriously enough to attend a press conference he gave, most remarkable for his lawyer's appearance in a kilt, which he explained was intended to secure comfort for his unusually large sexual organs: "Those at the other end of the spectrum find [pants] quite confining."

In which a group of right-wingers get taken in by a satiric blog post on Barack Obama's college thesis, written ages ago, and frantically presented as real. The post, which was tagged as SATIRE, described how Time Magazine's Joe Klein had obtained ten pages of a thesis written by Barack Obama, in which he wrote about how the Constitution was "inherently flawed." Then Rush Limbaugh and Michael Ledeen presented this story as fact.

A popular theory on right-wing websites like The Free Republic, American Thinker and WorldNetDaily, claiming that educator (and former radical) Bill Ayers helped Obama write "Dreams Of My Father." There is no evidence supporting this claim.

Is Obama the Antichrist? These folks think maybe so. McCain also verged on endorsing this theory during the campaign season with an attack ad called "The One."

A theory that began circulating during the campaign season and has been kept alive by Tea Partiers, and other ultra-conservatives. It's taken different forms over the year (Will Obama be sworn into office on Qur'an??, asks one website.) Most recently Tea Party leader Mark Williams had a meltdown on CNN, and claimed that Obama was an "Indonesian Muslim" and a "welfare thug." According to Obama and those who know him, this is not so.

Ever listened to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" backwards? How about Obama's presidential acceptance speech? This video suggests that the speech, like the Zeppelin song, contains a Satanic message when played in reverse. Go ahead - take a bong hit, try it and tell us what you hear.

Did Hugo Chavez fund the Obama campaign? No. But some people thought so after a Fox News affiliate issued a false report claiming that he did.

One of the few conspiracy theories to go after the Obamas' marriage. The claim is that Michelle banished Barack's female aide (and suspected lover) to the Caribbean. Every person involved, including the woman, says this is false.

Initiated by the author of the Atlas Shrugged blog and claiming that Obama is actually Malcolm X's son. As Ezra Klein pointed out at the time: "Honestly, who wouldn't give Malcolm props for that one?"
Klein continued: "And think there's anyway we can fit Tupac into the bloodline? Or maybe Obama actually is Tupac? You know that whole shooting was some bullshit, right? Incidentally, I see no reason to stop with Malcolm. History is full of great Xs for Barack Obama to be related to. Professor X, which would explain why millions of white people lose their minds in his presence. Weapon X, which would explain the adamantium grafted onto his skeleton. XML, which would explain why it's so easy to structure his data. I'm sure there are others."